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Show EDDIE CICOTTE HAS 1 A "MYSTERY" BALL i White Sox Pitcher Uncorks Curve Called "Paraffine." When It Is Bting Thrown, Pellet Takes an Uneven Discoloration, but Umpires Regard It as j Within Law of Baseball. They called it the "shim;" hall for a time, and Inter it whs culled the "parafline" hull. It appears now thai, the ball which Eddie Cicotte has so completely mustered should be known as the "mystery" ball. Cicotte, or some other member of his team Is so skillful In his massage work on the pellet that even the umpires are In a haze about it. Once in a great while a ball Is thrown out, but most of them stay in the game, despite the numerous numer-ous protests of opposing players. There is no denying the fact that Cicotte is as smart as any other pitcher pitch-er in the game, smarter than most of them; also that lie has plenty of natural nat-ural ability and probably would he a consistent winner without the freak delivery which he alone seems to have mastered. But it Is likewise true that when he is pitching, the ball takes on an uneven discoloration that can be noticed in the grandstand. Umpires examine It, realize that it is discolored, discol-ored, but regard it as within the baseball base-ball law. Last summer Joe Finneran of the Yankees used the delivery with some success but nothing like that of Cicotte. At .Comiskey park the Chicago Chi-cago players put up protests against Finneran, but Billy Evans, who was umpiring the series, declined to throw out the ball when Finneran was pitching, pitch-ing, since he figured it was no different differ-ent than when Cicotte was working. Finneran's mode of doctoring the hall consisted in rubbing parafline into the seams on one side of the ball. By pressing his glove into the dirt and rubbing the ball into the palm of the glove the dirt entered the seams and stuck there, thus making the side of the ball containing the paralGne and dirt heavier than the other. Without the parafline the dirt would not hold but the wax substance kept it in. Finneran Fin-neran could make the ball take peculiar pe-culiar gyrations in practice, but he could not properly control it In a game. |